This weekend my family celebrated my nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish ceremony marking a boy’s (or girl’s) 13th birthday and the fact that he is becoming a man. It represents the change from a boy with little social responsibility to a man with the onus to do good in the world and to affect positive change. It’s a lovely service at temple where the young man reads from the Torah, surrounded by all of his friends and family.

A Bar Mitzvah is also a big, fat party with music, food, dancing and pure chaos. It was an absolute blast, and I saw my kid do some stuff that blew my mind. First of all, he was in a suit. Garrett, my adorable little man, looked like a lady killer in his pin-stripe jacket and tie. When we got into the tent that held the festivities, incredibly loud music poured out of the speakers… And Garrett promptly covered his ears and scrunched up his nose. “It’s too loud!”, he screamed. And I thought we were in for a very long, frustrating night. But then a song came on that must have been “his jam”, because all of a sudden he ran to the dance floor and started rocking out. I mean, he wasn’t merely dancing, he was feeling the music and busting a freakin’ move! This dance fest lasted for about an hour, and I’m still sore. I danced with him (well, NEAR him) the entire time and I had the sweat pouring down my face to prove it.

I finally pried him away from the dance floor long enough to say hi to some folks and have a little drink. Then the DJ started playing a song I requested at the beginning of the night: “The Final Countdown”. If you haven’t read my post on this little ditty, now might be a good time to do it. Suffice it to say, it’s Garrett’s favorite song. And as soon as he heard it, he ran full speed onto the dance floor and started going nuts! Within seconds, he was surrounded by every one of the 80 tweens attending the party. Outside of them were the rest of us, staring in wide-eyed awe at the three-year-old in the middle of the floor. At the chorus Garrett started to jump up and down, and so did all the kids around him. It was like he was their short, blond czar and they all had to do exactly what he was doing. Then they all started chanting, “Go Garrett, Go Garrett, Go Garrett!” and he kept dancing. Read more

This isn’t some cryptic post about the end of the World or a countdown to some awesome event I have coming up.

This is the song from 1986 by Europe which my son has become obsessed with.

It started about a year ago with this video of Spongebob set to the song. We happened upon it accidentally while looking up random Spongebob videos to entertain Garrett. We watched this video about 10 times a day for at least a couple months. Garrett sang it at the top of his lungs at the grocery store. We danced to it as a family in the living room. Then the novelty wore off for all of us.

About a year later, Garrett’s interests had turned toward dinosaurs. So as good 21st Century parents, we took to our laptop, got on YouTube and typed in “dinosaurs”. Randomly, this video popped up. Are you kidding? There’s a video with pictures of dinosaurs set to the same song??? It began again. Only this time it’s been going on at least THREE months and we dance to the song nightly. Garrett likes to sing the types of dinosaurs to the beat of the song. Instead of “It’s the final countdown”, he sings, “It’s a pterodactyl!” He even enjoys the occasional viewing of the original Europe video. He watches with his mouth agape, seemingly taking in every 80’s-Hair-Band-Rocker move. Then he mimes a guitar solo and Russ and I create pretend pyrotechnics behind him.

Long story short, we’re saving up for guitar lessons, hair gel, leather pants, and a paleontologist’s kit.